


Gondwana and Laurasia

by winchilsea



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Metafiction, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-19
Updated: 2013-10-19
Packaged: 2017-12-29 21:32:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1010344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winchilsea/pseuds/winchilsea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two armies are standing on either side of a transform fault. Isn't it wonderful, the metaphors science gives us? </p><p>(Backstory. It's all about the backstory.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gondwana and Laurasia

On a beach—near Cuba or in Cuba or halfway across the world, it doesn't matter now—an optimist with a cynical mind and a cynic with an optimistic heart stand, but not side by side. It's up to you to decide which is which.

The tide is coming, and the war too, if one of them can't be stopped. They're standing there in the sand and the crux of the matter is that they don't understand each other, not really. They never will.

Mirrors—they saw each other as mirrors but took it as glass instead, had thought the path kept going, but they've run into it now, chasing each other—everything's shattered, illusion included. There aren't any mirrors.

(But there should be—maybe then they'd finally get a good look at themselves.)

On a beach that's about to burn, there are two men and what should have been a half dozen children standing. One of them fell long before this, and it started when he was born, cursed to the very construct of his existence, except maybe even before that, when the generations preceding his birth failed him by bringing monsters into the world.

(Is it socially acceptable to smother your child because they've got an evil look in their eyes?)

This was always going to happen. Inevitably and indubitably so. The world is always going to be filled with optimists and cynics and maybe—maybe we would've all sat stewing for a little while longer before watching it all play out on a different stage, different actors, different setting. Maybe—but come on, this is more interesting. Just look at the backstory.

There are two men standing somewhere and every step they've taken has led them to this, like lambs to slaughter. 

Backstory. 

It's all about the backstory.

*

His mother named him Charles Xavier—or maybe it was actually his father, but that's not an important detail, not really—and the sound of it rolls off the tongue easily enough that people say it just to taste the weight of it in their mouths. His name is decadent, and they feel all the poorer just for doing it, inadequate and a little like they've just incanted the ending words of a prayer.

That should've been a sign, but signs don't mean anything in this world unless they're painted red or green or yellow and say KINGSFIELD RD in screaming white letters.

His name is Charles Xavier and he knows this because you know this and from now on, he knows everything you know. Welcome, stranger-no-more. Your memories are no longer yours, not when he's plucking them from your head as absently as one sucks in oxygen from the air and smells ten thousand different things.

You think your head is special, discernible from the 2.5 billion other heads in the world? You're just background noise.

*

Erik Lehnsherr's name is sharp, like a mouth full of razors, and Max Eisenhardt is stout and stalwart, and can't you see where a man like him is coming from? War stories—hear one, you've heard them all. But only the callous would say that because war stories are horror stories, and we just keep finding new ways to tell those, don't we?

And Erik Lehnsherr, we keep finding new ways to tell his story. Is he a martyr, a general? Let loose the dogs of war! Maybe one of them is him. A mouth full of razors. Yeah, he can bite, snap, gnaw. He's gnawing at a bone, grinding it down between his teeth like a babe with a pacifier—only, the pacifier doesn't bleed.

Swaddle him in the skins of his fellows, and watch their ghosts weigh him down. If you're lucky, Erik Lehnsherr doesn't know you, and you don't have to cut your tongue on his name.

*

The ocean is blue, blue like their eyes, blue like the sky. Blue like everything that was supposed to be beautiful.

The ocean is blue, the waves churn, and they're all staring at the sky, holding their breaths because two of them are staring into each other's eyes and just wait—

Blue is beautiful.

*

Blue is beautiful, but don't tell that to _her_. Or better yet, tell her all the time. Tell her when she scrubs it from her skin, when she's blue, when she's not blue. Tell her, but for the love of all that is good, _don't_ tell her. 

She won't believe you anyway.

The general consensus is that she's in the wrong story, born blue—blue like the veins curling inside her, blue like the corpse of humanity, decaying and rotting from the outside in. (Shield your organs.) Blue, blue, blue like all the beautiful things aren't.

She's in the wrong story, but what does that matter when she can shift her scales to match the background?

*

Don't talk to _him_ about blue either. But don't worry, it'll grow on him and he'll wear it more easily than she ever did. Does.

*

There is a story about two brothers.

There are always stories about two brothers because that is how history works: two brothers, circling each other. This is a story with a different flavor.

There are two brothers. One day, the sun erupts out from under their skin; fire and fury and fear.

Then there is one brother, and he is alone, and he is angry. The sun inside him is waiting to claw free.

Icarus did not fall into the ocean. He fell into the sun.

Icarus is rising.

*

No, this is wrong.

There was never an Icarus.

Just two brothers going supernova.

*

You will not convince any of them that the world does not hate them, though they will tell you otherwise. Most of them are kids, you see, going through that awkward middle phase of their early years where they willingly paint themselves the outcast.

Except, well. None of them have any paint brushes.

They were walking one day, minding their own business, cool as a cucumber, when someone tipped a bucket over their head. And then another person. And another. And another.

You will not convince any of them that the world does not hate them, but there are exceptions to every rule.

Maybe not this one, though.

*

Two armies are sliding past each other—come now, we've all had this lesson. We were once Pangea until the world split apart, land masses shifting, sliding, buckling. Mountains divided, forests split. Two armies are standing on either side of a transform fault.

Isn't wonderful, the metaphors science gives us?

*

An interloper is here. She has no part to play on their stage, but she leaps across the pit and claws her way up. It'd be admirable.

It _is_ admirable.

But it's not admira _tion_ in their eyes. The curtains part because her hands are tearing them open. The actors look up, bewildered.

There's a gun in her hands and it's not a prop. There's a gun in her hands and she knows how to use it. There's a gun in her hands and she method acts.

Let's talk about training. They got a crash course on the subject, but it's entirely possible she has spent her whole life training. Not for this moment—nothing could have trained her for this moment.

That's probably where it went wrong.

She was trained, but not for this.

A shot rings clear in the air, heard 'round the world. (Except not. We will bury this day in history, in the white space in textbooks, in redacted documents. This is a tragedy in motion, and there is no stage.)

*

The beach is not burning.

*

If the ravens of the Tower of London ever left, England would fall. There is only one Raven here, and her brother is lying in the sand, lying through his teeth.

*

We don't see much beyond his red hair. He shakes his head, chews his gum, and smiles.

It's not the seeing that's important, it's the hearing.

Cover your ears, love, would you? It won't offend him, the poor dear. No one's ever listened to him in his whole life. When his mouth parts, people flinch. Instinct, of course. Through some miracle, he has never harmed anyone in his life until he was fished out from the aquarium.

But people have always turned deaf to him, never quite hearing the words falling out of his mouth. The wordless, piercing cries didn't come until later.

Until he learned to fly on their temerity alone.

*

But there's one of them who has wings on which to fly. Her name tells us her wings her feathered, but they aren't. They're not.

Why are we ever surprised when things aren't what they seem on the surface? By now, it's practically the norm.

So you caught her dancing.

Is that all you ever thought she was?

*

The truth is, they do want the same thing—only, they want it in different ways. Today, no war was waged. But it's only a matter of time.

*

These are things that may or may not happen. Some in this universe, some in another, some in none.

  * Ravens, once free, never fly back to the Tower to get their wings clipped. The Kingdom of Englad has fallen, a herald will say. The Kingdom of England has been toppled, but not crumbled. It is on its knees, and will never stand again. But we are not a generation made for standing and walking, are we?
  * The dead sometimes come back—not to haunt us, but to help us.
  * One brother gets traded in for another. If possible, he is angrier. The sun underneath his skin has been going supernova for years and he is waiting to be burnt out.
  * Continents slide back together, forming mountains, forming volcanoes. Continental drift is a myth. It is not the work of the earth. It is the work of man.
  * Someday, all this will be underwater.
  * Blue is just blue. It is not anything else but a fact, unchangeable. On his worst days, he will call it a mistake. But he was an actor on that stage and studied under the best. See his smile? He is genial now, less bitter, no longer fumbling. But the nature of man is not his to have. We shall see carnage on him soon enough.
  * War comes. War goes. No one ever stays dead.
  * We are all going to the same place, and that place is death.
  * There are two armies.



**Author's Note:**

> also on [tumblr](http://echraide.tumblr.com/post/64883340770/gondwana-and-laurasia-gen-xmfc).


End file.
